"Linux vendor Canonical said it has 'no interest' in Linux kernel development. Two weeks ago a Linux Foundation report showed that since version 2.6.32, Microsoft had committed more code to the Linux kernel than Canonical. Since then, Canonical has faced claims from rivals that it does not contribute to Linux as much as it should given its popularity. Recently Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told The Inquirer that his company has no interest in contributing to the Linux kernel." Why is this such a bad thing? You can contribute more to open source than code alone. Like, I don't know, users?

It's really pretty crappy to keep bashing us for that. We *bought out* Qumranet, who had *already developed* the product that formed the basis of RHEV-M as a Windows-only app. Since there were already people depending on that app, it would have been pretty crappy of us to say 'oh, we're going to take it away until we've re-written it, just so no-one can say HA HA Red Hat has a product that only works on Windows HA HA. So sorry about your mission-critical workload, but preserving our reputation against clueless internet commenters comes first".

As soon as we bought it out we started re-developing it as a cross-platform open source application, and as soon as that was done, we released it. It's now written in Java and cross-platform. So your snark is now outdated.

(edit: oh, according to the specs, some small bit still needs Windows; okay. I'm not hugely familiar with the product in detail. The point still stands: would you prefer we just take the thing out until the rewrite is done? Who does that help?)

What, exactly, are you suggesting would have been better? To not buy Qumranet, thus resulting in the app being proprietary and Windows-only forever? To buy Qumranet, but bury the app and leave our customers with absolutely no management solution _at all_ for years while we rewrote the whole thing?